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All-Black Alice In Wonderland: The 2018 Pirelli Calendar Launch Party Was Lit

In the Pirelli 2018 calendar, photographer Tim Walker and Vogue‘s Edward Enninful re-imagined Alice in Wonderland with an all-black, star-studded cast. The launch party on Friday saw Duckie Thot, Thando Hopa, Slick Woods and other incomparable celebrities serving serious looks. This is what some of our faves wore and had to say the shoot:

Thando Hopa: The Princess of Hearts

South African lawyer, activist and model Thando Hopa wore a Gert Coetzee gown to the launch. Pirelli’s Princess of Hearts had the following to say: “We spoke about representation, diversity, inclusion. It became one of those projects where you knew this particular thing would set such a precedent. It felt like something significant.”

Pictured next to Thando below, Whoopi Goldberg was cast as The Royal Duchess, and told the Cut: “I’ve always known how people see women of colour and how they think of women of colour. I get lots of comments. To be on the set with all colours of brown was extraordinary.”

“You hold a special place in my heart Tim. Thank you for telling the world that fairytales belong to every girl. We worked so hard on this, really couldn’t help but cry after we finished shooting. Thank you for choosing me to be your Alice.” This was Duckie Thot’s message to Tim Walker on Instagram. The iconic model cast as Alice also appeared in Rihanna’s hugely successful Fenty Beauty campaign.

Duckie added: “I was born and raised in Australia, so I didn’t have peers who looked like me. I never saw them on the covers of anything. I never saw them on my screen. It means so much to me because I know it’s going to impact some girl’s life in a way that I wish I had when I was younger.”

Fashion model and style legend, Slick Woods was perfectly cast as the enigmatic Mad Hatter. In an Instagram post, the star penned a simple and profound caption: “A step into our children knowing that our history didn’t start with slavery #pirellicalendar“:

Some of the other cast members include Lupita Nyong’o, Djimon Hounsou, Ru Paul, Adut Akech, Alpha Dia, King Owusu, Wilson Oryema, Zoe Bedeaux and Sasha Lane. The Pirelli Calendar has certainly evolved from it’s past Eurocentric hetero-normative beauty standards, with unretouched celebrities featuring in the 2017 calendar and this unapologetically black wonderland for next year.